Marketing yourself as an advisor is tricky.
Sure, you can create case studies and highlight things you accomplished. You can point to websites you helped redesign or copy you helped write.
But so much of what we do is intangible.
How do we explain the internal transformations we helped create? How do we showcase the knowledge the client now has after working with you?
It’s hard to showcase your expertise when so much of what we do is intangible. But there are ways to do this outside of writing another article or Twitter thread.
A super effective way is to do “teardowns” of established businesses in your niche.
Maybe you record a video of Stripe’s new website design. Or Slack’s positioning. Or the checkout flow of some well-known ecommerce brand. Or the blog content of a really well-done fintech website.
Or, maybe you evaluate all the touchpoints across multiple channels—showing the breadth of your expertise and the areas you focus on during your consulting gigs.
A lot of times, people don’t know what consultants can actually do for them.
By showcasing the positives (with some room for improvement perhaps) of established companies in your space, it shows people how you think.
It’s your chance to teach your ideal clients how you approach businesses like theirs. They can learn things to apply themselves (or hire you to help).
Case studies are pretty boring, even if someone is thinking about hiring you.
They’re not bad, they’re just not great lead-gen content.
Why not do a teardown instead (leaving out the criticism) to showcase your knowledge instead?
You could even do a teardown of your own clients’ marketing and share that—at least it makes case studies a little more interesting!
A well-educated client has high-fidelity glasses on. They suddenly see the details and thought process that goes into things.
And that makes them want the same for their own business. They will also be more likely to believe you can help them do it.
If you can create a lightbulb moment for your clients, you’re in pretty good shape.
Show, don’t tell.
—kw